Let’s Celebrate! It’s St. Patrick’s Day

Something Smart

Today’s “Something Smart” is a sensory bin with a math focus. There are several shamrock cut outs hiding in the grass, each one labelled with a number on the back. The goal is to find a shamrock, look at the number, say it out loud and then count out that many coins on the ten frame grid. 

The ten frame helps children see numbers in relation to 10s and 5s. This is important because our number system is built on repeating groups of 10. For example: 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, – start a new 10 group – 40, 41, 42 and so on. Five is also important because, as half of ten, it’s half of a continually repeating set (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40…)

Eventually children will recognize the quantities without counting when they are using these ten frames – this is called subitizing. Another example of subitizing would be noticing 4 dots on dice and knowing it is 4 without having to count the dots. This helps to build basic number sense skills.   

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All of the sensory bin materials are from Dollar Tree and the ten frame printable can be downloaded here.

Something Sweet

Do you have a green thumb? How about trying your hand at nurturing a shamrock plant? The specific species of plant that we were able to find was the oxalis. We’re hoping for some luck in keeping this little guy alive because we don’t have the most impressive track record. A fun activity is to paint a special pot for your plant. We decided to get a second plant for Nana and Papa’s house because Nana is Irish. We painted a pot for their plant too and hope that it brings them lots of luck 💚  

Something to Make

How do you make a rainbow? This activity is great for learning all about how primary colours are mixed to make secondary colours.

See the photos and description below to create your rainbow: 

• You’ll need 7 cups (clear allow you to see the ‘magic’ the best). 
• Fill the first, third, fifth, and seventh cup with water and food colour in this order: red, yellow, blue, red. 
• Keep the second, fourth and sixth cups empty. 
• Fold paper towels twice length-wise into thirds to make narrow long strips that will “bridge” from one water-filled cup to one empty cup. (They may be too long and have to be trimmed shorter depending on the depth of your cups) 
• Each empty cup should have two paper towel ends in it coming from the cups on either side

We did this activity right before bed so we could experience a big reveal in the morning as a surprise. However, if you want to watch the process unfold, you can see the water get absorbed by the paper towel and travel into the neighbouring cup, creating a new colour.  

Something to Eat

I find that a festive snack board always goes over well at our house. It creates a bit of excitement because it’s not something that comes out every day and it usually fits a good theme.  In my opinion, this is a great way to introduce (or re-introduce) kids to foods that are newer to them or are non-favourites. In this case, kiwi is ‘newer’ for us and a non-favourite is green pepper, but because they’re presented with other familiar ‘go-to’ snacks, in small portions and in a fun way, they’re a bit more inviting to try.   

I hope this post gave you some fun ideas to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year. I’d love to hear about any traditions you like to take part in too. Let me know in the comments below.

Have a lucky day!